Our current incarnation of capitalism -- variously referred to as savage capitalism, extreme capitalism or euphemistically as the "free market" (free of any constraints) -- is in one of its periodic crises. For years many assumed that the smart people who ran the system and benefitted from it would find a practical way to fix it. The problem is that the solutions are all framed within an ideology that makes that extremely unlikely. Neo-liberalism is like a religion and once you are a true believer you see other solutions as heresy.

How can the left fight back in the age of austerity? This is a clear and constant question being posed by and to people on the left. When the worldwide economic crisis hit in 2008, it was clear there would not be an immediate shift toward radical alternatives to capitalism. Still, five years into the crisis there has been little growth or development in the position of the anti-capitalist left.

There has been slew of recent news stories in the press about how the austerity experiment in Europe and to a lesser extent in North America has utterly failed. Left-wing economists, such as Dean Baker and Paul Krugman, have repeatedly hammered home that the economic rationale behind austerity is baseless. The New Yorker even just published a story declaring austerity has failed.

Sunday's revelation that the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) will be bringing in "temporary guest workers" to replace some of its Canadian employees captured headlines, sparking outrage and surprise, and leading many to threaten a bank boycott and move their accounts elsewhere.

The outrage is certainly understandable -- as one would think that RBC, with its more than $2 billion in first quarter profits, could afford to retain these workers -- but the surprise isn't.

Conspiracy theories in the United States are as common as mass murderers. Nor are they the monopoly of any one ideology. Today, crackpots on the right have no doubt that Barack Obama is a Kenyan-born Muslim who orchestrated the massacre at Newtown's Sandy Hook public school as a ruse to confiscate all guns from freedom-loving Americans while he raises a private black army to slaughter whites. You know I couldn't make this up.